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Sunday, September 10, 2006

Worst Journey

Last Thursday, I had one of the worst journeys of my life. Like every week, I took a bus back home from Kedah to KL. However, this time I was going with a bus company called Gung Gunung Raya for the first time.

Here is the whole story in brief:

Left around 2 pm. It was a hot day and realised that the air conditioning was not working. Started sweating.

Driver stopped on the side of highway twice - first to buy some Pomelos and another to buy a drink from stalls by the side. Still seating.

Passenger calls the company boss. Company says that they are sending a new bus.

Wait for several minutes but bus doesn't show up. We ask the bus to move ahead and stop at some rest area. A lot of the passengers want to take a leak.

Along the way, notice that there is a bulge at the side of the bus where I am sitting. Press it and I go OMG. Realise that there is water inside. I was thinking to myself " I will be really wet if this bursts".

The bus stops at a rest area and the replacement bus catches up.

We all get into the new bus and settle down.

The bus stops at Bukit Gantang rest area. The driver says that we will move after 20 mintues - they take 45 minutes.

8 comments:

many years back i used to take gunung raya all the time and they were ok but from 3 or 4 years back i started taking konsortium bus express (supercoach). so haven't taken gunung raya for a long long time... but just yesterday i took it. what a co-incidence i just came back from kl taking gunung raya a few hours ago and then read about your complaints on gunung raya. let me share my experience.

actually we wanted to take konsortium bus back (kl to pg) but all tickets sold out and we went round a few other bus companies (like sri maju) also no tickets so we finally settled on gunung raya... and ahh yes indeed... lousy.

first of all instead of leaving at 6.30, it left at 7.00 and the bus did not stop where it should too and the bus no. they gave us was different.

on the road, they stop twice too... once i think the driver buy something too. then once at juru, i think they want to stop for another bus to come to send those from butterworth over but after waiting some time, no bus so they had to go to butterworth (ferry terminal) then detour to pg bridge to go to the island. this bus we took was suppose to go straight to the island, not detour to butterworth. as a result of it stopping once and detour to butterworth we were delayed in our journey.

Well, i figured why bus/lorry/taxi drivers are so terrible. I had a fren who took the GDL license- and he said that there was a compulsory class (similar to undang class) and the trainer asked them questions like "do you know what's the tire for" and they spend most of the time going for yumcha breaks...hahah

i normally take the transnasional executive coach (sounds posh but in true fact they're not) for my kl-jb-kl trips back then. bus sucks but drivers are nice! i remembered a similar incident. got on the first one at larkin bus station, jb, air cond didnt work. very stuffy and hot. they then stopped at air hitam, we had to wait for the next bus for half and hour. got on the 2nd bus, after an hour on the highway, flat tyre! waited for another transnational bus from spore, almost full, i was travelling with quite a load, 2 big bags, and was left behind, almost the last one to get on that spore-kl bus. got on it, no more seats, 4 of us had to wait for the next one. and in my mind, god knows how long the next one's gonna come! the driver then stopped few other busses not the transnasional ones, some called bunga raya and kkkl, and the other 2 got on it, but i didnt want to go to PUDU, i wanted MY usual stop which was MATIC jalan ampang. and after waiting almost for an hour, the next transnasional bus came, and so the 2 of us got on it! i didnt mind that much, didnt go crazy or upset, or moody, at all, coz i know at the end of the day, its gonna be worth it.. the bus was only occupied with 3 passengers, air cond was in full blast, tv/video worked fine, clean, comfy seats, and.... indeed, had to first struggle a bit for my kl trip, coz it was all worth it in the end! (a few days later was my first meeting with hardy) :)))) hehehh